Dinner at Grandma's

[WTF0ver]

My granny (in her 90s) invited me over for dinner tonight. My entire family are leave voters and it's put a strain on our relationship for sure.

Anyway, I'd been there for 30 minutes and she launched into a diatribe about the EU, immigration, black people, foreign doctors working in the NHS etc etc; holy shit I was furious listening to her and about ready to walk out.

Eventually she noticed I was angry and changed the subject on to asking about my husband's visa application. Yes, I'm married to a forriner. Only he's not so bad because he's white and from a commonwealth country. The irony!

I was still silently seething when I left. She wanted to know when I'd next visit.

How well do you get on with her normally?

I'm sorry about your Gran - it's so hard. Somehow before the ref, the abhorrent views were concealed in our loved ones- now the genie is out of the bottle.

At 90 there's no point trying to explain to her how EU migrants benefitted the economy by billions. Explaining they were greater contributors to the economy than native borns etc etc is no good. She just won't get it or accept it.

Perhaps you can discuss the US and at least condemn Trump together?

Why not get her one of those DNA tests for Christmas (!) .The perfect gift for the racist in your life. You could help her get the results ..it may show up some forrin genes?

She must have seen a lot of change in her 90 years and perhaps she's found it personally challenging. But thats quite a list she has there!

Oh poor you op. Next time you see her sit her down and give her a good explaining too. Get some tips from struggle sessions. She'll soon come back to her senses

We've always been very close. It's sad.

Yeah definitely right about genies and bottles after the vote. She'd make the rare comment before but it's more often now. She gets most of her "news" from the Daily Express.

I'm not very knowledgeable about politics or history or good at arguing a point but when I did talk about the NHS being sold to the US she just pressed her lips together in a kind of irritated fashion. If I do go back it'll be on the condition that she doesn't talk about immigration etc or I'll leave right away.

My husband got me one of those DNA tests and it said I'm 100% British/Irish! Boring. I imagine she's the same?

Whatever her views at least she’s not gaga .
What did she cook you for dinner ?

My grandma (would be 99 this year if she were alive) was really pro-EU, purely because of having lived through WWII and thought we were all much stronger together. She used to argue like mad with my dad (Brexiter), and this was back in the 90s and 00s, before Brexit was a thing! She had a large group of friends - all elderly widows - and without fail all of them were pro-EU. That generation voted to remain overall. I'd love to know how the Queen would have voted if she could.

My family are the same op.
I wonder what she'll think if she starts needing carers, where will they be from I wonder? I do really hope she isn't racist to them.

I remember just after the referendum I was talking to a care home manager. She told me they'd made voting a bit of a day out for those residents who wanted to go. They were wheeled down to the polling station by their lovely eastern European care workers and every one of them voted Leave while complaining about all the immigrants and wanting to get rid of them and just have English people. I guess a lot of the residents might have dementia, maybe that's why they say/think things like that? It's so sad what we've become though.

That generation voted to remain overall

I've heard a lot of evidence to show that as well. I guess it would be 95+ to have lived as an adult/fought in WW2.

How horrible it sounds awful. I don't know what the country is turning to. My 91 year old relative is an patriotic remainer fortunately, based purely on peace and cooperation in Europe - it must have something to do with living through her town being in the thick of the fighting in the war.

She’s quite unusual in that respect - most of her generation who were still with us voted remain because they understood the stakes of a divided Europe. My grandfather was a staunch EU supporter.

Over here in Germany I know quite a few seniors who were children during WW2, and they think Brexit is bonkers.

Loving 'the perfect gift for the racist in your life'.

I work in social care and I really don't understand where folk thing carers are going to come from. We are already struggling to provide care due to staffing issues. Care workers won't be part of the NHS visa thingy being proposed. It should really make everyone who is approching, or has a loved one approaching old age very, very worried

My late Mum's last vote before she died was Remain. Some of my younger family members voted Leave. As well as an in law who's my age (fifties) and possibly their spouse (my older sibling).
I live in a Leave area . The parents of one of DD's friends is a no dealer.
Best thing to do is to avoid talking politics. Of any kind. For pretty much ever.

I've had many conversations with elderly people who need to go into nursing homes who only want to go into one staffed by British people.

It's hard to still be polite during those conversations while all the while I'm thinking 'Good luck with that' and 'my DM is one of those foreigners who wiped English arses in nursing homes for peanuts, just I'm white and sound posh so you don't realise it'

They think I am part of their club and it just creeps me out.

As for foreign doctors in the NHS - I sat in a cancer MDT once and looked around and the only British doctor there was me. And I'm only half Brit! If it wasn't for the foreigners, no-one would have been having their cancer treated in that hospital at all.

FWIW my late aunt voted to remain when she was 99. She was the only person I knew who was an adult in ww2. She was gutted the day after the referendum.

Fenella not true. Plenty of older elderly people also voted to leave because they can see the empirical mess rather like soviet Eastern bloc Europe is turning into and having fought for freedom, freedom for any country to be in control of it self, many are not happy to hand those hard won freedoms, over to a large political bloc that's looking like soviet bloc all the time.

Also most elderly people realise its not down to the forming of the eu that peace exists in Europe.
It's simply that every country was wiped out in social human and economic terms after two major World wars and there was no appetite for war.

Europe can't even contribute properly to nato and its nato that holds the peace keeping power.

Back in the fifties when my immigrant Mum first came to this country to work in the NHS - they didn't have enough nurses back then either- she occasionally got badmouthed by patients' objections to non- British people wiping their arse. Nothing new, sadly.

Yeah I've heard it's unusual for someone who survived the war to be anti-EU. She lived in London during the Blitz and hates Germans! Like it's modern day Germans' fault that Hitler did what he did ffs.

She made mince and potatoes. And wanted to feed me pudding too, and biscuits. But I had already had lots of cake today so said dinner was fine.

She was going on about how the NHS started and all that, which I'm not hugely familiar with. And how much it used to cost to get seen to in old money.

I don't think she'd make a racist comment to someone's face. I remember when she had a cataract op commenting to us afterwards that the doctor was Indian and she couldn't understand him.

I'm in a remain area in a remain country (Scotland), friends and colleagues are remain voters; it's only my family who I know that are leave voters. I hadn't even mentioned anything about the EU last night (hoping it wouldn't come up) but the news was on with BJ/GE stuff so maybe that's what instigated it. It's not the first time we've had an argument about it but I was hoping last night would pass without it being mentioned.

My dad (who is 89) is a bit like this. He tends to forget that I am one of those migrants he hates so much.

We don't have much of a relationship any more.

I think with racist relatives like that, you just have to change the subject immediately. They eventually get the hint.

Yeah I think I'll do that next time, change the subject and leave if she persists.

I hear you OP, my PILs are the same although in they are younger. It really has affected my relationship with them and I just don't want to see them as much as I used to to avoid these conversations. What really irritates me is them talking to my DCs with their poisonous Daily Mail bile.

My lovely late grandmother was a refugee from Hungary. She came over here in 1956, fleeing the Soviet invasion. She worked for our NHS as a nurse and had three children - one of them my father - with a British man. She lived with us during my childhood when my grandfather died. She would be devastated if she were still here to hear how people are talking about Eastern Europeans in the UK right now. She was no stranger to racism - her best friend Norma at the hospital was a Windrush generation migrant and I used to hear them talk about the horrible language sometimes used about black people and that a patient had refused to be treated by a black nurse. But my grandmother thought that the UK had become so much more tolerant. I remember her talking about it 10 years or so ago. She died just before the referendum. I miss her every day, but a part of me is glad she didn’t have to see what came after.

@VeryGenuinequestions your ‘plenty of elderly people’ isn’t supported by the data - that very much reinforces my point as true. You can see more info on this analysis by the LSE here:

blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2019/03/21/not-all-the-over-65s-are-in-favour-of-brexit-britains-wartime-generation-are-almost-as-pro-eu-as-millennials/

Can you please explain what you mean about NATO? You say that Europe doesn’t contribute to NATO and it holds the peacekeeping power. You mean the same NATO that’s headquartered in Brussels, 3 of its 4 most senior roles are filled by European citizens and 27 of its 29 members are in Europe? How is Europe not contributing to that properly?